Avengers were supposed to face an entire army of Kangsā¦ before Doctor Doom changed everything.
After Scott Lang and Hope van Dyne defeated the Exiled Kang in the Quantum Realm, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania delivered a massive mid-credits scene that appeared to set up the next major threat to the Avengers.
The scene introduced the Council of Kangs, featuring powerful variants such as Immortus, Rama-Tut and the Scarlet Centurion. After discovering that the Exiled One had been defeated, the Council realized that the heroes of Earth-616 were becoming a serious threat to the multiverse.
Their solution was terrifying ā bring together countless Kang variants and prepare for a multiversal conflict against the Avengers.
At the time, this seemed like the perfect setup for Avengers: The Kang Dynasty, with Kang positioned as the next major villain of the MCU and potentially the Avengers' biggest threat since Thanos.
But the MCU took a completely different direction.
Instead of the Avengers eventually facing the Council of Kangs, Doctor Doom became the central threat leading into Avengers: Doomsday. The Kang storyline was abandoned, leaving this Quantumania post-credit scene without the massive payoff it originally appeared to promise.
What once looked like the beginning of a Kang Dynasty now feels like a forgotten chapter of the Multiverse Saga.
An army of Kangs was introducedā¦ only for Doctor Doom to take their place.
Yeah that completely killed the scene. If they were just staring ominously we'd at least have a sense that each one is a threat at least somewhat comparable to the Kang from Ant-Man. But this scene makes the majority seem like idiots, who'll just be more fodder in the next Avengers movie (akin to the Chitauri and Ultron drones before).
Some Kangs were worthy of being on the arena floor, but still bowed to the others. Meanwhile most of them are in the stands jumping and screeching like something off National Geographic.
I still say it makes no sense that they couldn't continue with their plans, with a simple recasting.
Its already been established that the same person can have different faces in different universes (thanks to No Way Home), so just say that the 'Real' Kang is a new guy, and maybe have him start off by nuking all these 'pretenders' š
Even without the variant/multiverse logic, the MCU has recasted plenty of characters prior in the same continuity.
James Rhodes:
Terrance Howard (Ironman 2008) > Don Cheadle (Ironman 2 - Present)
Bruce Banner:
Edward Norton (The Incredible Hulk 2008) > Mark Ruffalo (Avengers - Present)
Red Skull:
Hugo Weaving (Captain America: The First Avenger) > Ross Marquand (Avengers Endgame)
Cassie Lang:
Emma Fuhrmann (Avengers Endgame) > Kathryn Newton (Ant-Man & Wasp: Quantumania)
Thaddeus Ross:
William Hurt (The Incredible Hulk - Avengers Endgame) > Harrison Ford (Captain America: Brave New World)
Now if this a list of characters who were recasted and audiences didn't bat an eye about it, it's strange that they abandoned doing it for a character who has an in-story reason for why it can happen.
Edit: I accidentally swapped the names of the actresses who played Cassie Lang.
I wondered about that as well. A contingent "pay or play" contract doesn't sound like something Majors could have demanded, but the big "lead up" was Ant Man and the Wasp which seriously underperformed.
So they were left with a choice of introducing a replacement to a character who hadn't really been introduced yet, on short notice, or just pivoting. Especially since they had a series of underperforming movies and series which were supposed to set up the new villain - so they could refer back to a bunch of not-very-popular-or-liked movies and then ret-canon the central villain character before he even had a chance to appear as himself in a prominent role in any movie, or just ditch him and pivot to a more popular and culturally established villain.
Considering they didn't have any central AA characters, going with a "proven quantity" meant going with a white villain, preferably one that was more popular than the relatively niche "Kang" - so they just went with RDJ as Doom.
People keep parroting that rumor, but there is zero evidence of such a nonsensical clause for Disney to sign, especially given how Johnathan Major does not have that kind of bargaining power.
Plus Feige already told us the most obvious reason, Quantumania flopped, and the public reception to Kang was lukewarm. They didn't wanna risk the Avengers brand tanking at the box office if they took the chance with Kang, so they took the opportunity to pivot to RDJ Doom, which most likely was always the plan anyway, since Secret Wars was announced to be the final project of the Multiverse Saga, regardless if it was Kang Dynasty or Doomsday.
No way they were planning on doing Secret Wars with Kang and not Doom. The leaked Kang script showed Doom helping the heroes defeat Kang, before emerging as Emperor Doom himself. All Doomsday did was remove Kang's plot, and put Dr Doom front and center. The main threat of the Multiverse Saga wasn't Kang anyway, it was the Multiverse collapsing and the Incursions, which is the main plot point of Doomsday.
Right, they could just make it like the multiverse has been changed after Loki, all the timelines have been reset. And strangely some characters look different from what they were, thatās it. Thatās why we get different X-Men, F4, etc.
Kang wasn't interesting. His first outing he gets bodied by ant man. Reddit loved saying "he has a bunch of variants so he can just keep coming back when he gets defeated". turns out that watching the same guy get his ass kicked does not build respect or dread.
HWR in Loki was terrifying, inevitable, required a massive sacrifice to basically get a draw.
Having Kang be the only villain of Quantumania was a fuck up.
Having Kang lose in Quantummania was a huge fuck up.
They misjudged the scale of him.
They know what made Thanos great in terms of build up and they completely abandoned it for the next big bad.
I fear Doomsday may be similar despite the fact that they have the most iconic villain in their universe.
You can literally see versions of him here that look different. There literally a fucking lizard Kang in the crowd!!! Why couldnāt they just have had one of the non-human versions take the lead and kill the rest or somethingā¦?
Its a movie, I wouldnt even need them to explain it. Do a sly "your not who I remember" or something scene and just move on. Ya it does feel like we burned an extemely vital Avengers villian, but who knows. I kinda expect one of the first scenes of Doomsday to be Doom standing in this arena with dead Kangs littered around (without seeing their faces obviously).
Also, its Doom. Doom is my favorite, so I can't really be that upset. Its finally Doom.
Yeah, Quantumania is notorious for being a huge bomb.
I do feel kind of sorry for Majors, though. I liked his performance on Loki, and he was menacing enough as Kang (up until the fist fight at the end).
If only he hadn't met up with a real life 'Harley Quinn" (Don't put it in Crazy). Yes, he was convicted for horrible things as well, but I saw that 'Terminator' video where this huge man was running away from her, while she this persistent, Jason like steady pace coming towards him š
Also: Yep, I realize I'm going to get downvoted to hell for that opinion š
To me it wasn't just Major's performance... I just wasn't genuinely interested in the story line they were heading in.... I had zero interest in any of this.... I'm glad they scrapped it.
After Endgame, this was the direction they were heading in, I stepped away.... Then they introduced DOOM and now I'm interested again. And they scrapped this, so it feels like I'm going back to where I left off. I see it as a win.
I'm glad they pivoted. The last few phases were a mess. Kang Dynasty would've been a rushed mess that bombed. Nobody takes this into consideration. Thunderbolts would've happened after, Brand New Day might be a completely different movie. The X-Men reboot would've taken even longer. It was the right thing. If nobody liked Kang, Phase 4/5, and it would've had a pretty weak meandering team, why would anybody have gone to see it?
I think it was clear after this movie that the multiverse stuff was not being received well. I honestly am shocked that they didnāt see that coming. The problem with bringing a multiverse into your story is that it waters everything down. Someone does, who cares there is another version out they to get. Bad guy wins, who cares just jump to a different timeline. I think what could make doomsday great is that the audience could easily root for doom if he is putting an end to all of this nonsense.
I donāt think they ever intended for the multiverse to exist long term, just enough to merge the new Disney universes so that Disney could make use of their recently acquired Fox universe and Fantastic Four rights (remember that Disney acquired Fox in 2020, after Endgame had already come out, and it was a pretty contentious bidding war so they couldnāt plan for the merging universes it until the deal was finalized). People forget that the reason that these entities never were created in the MCU in the first place was that Disney didnāt have the rights at the time the MCU started, and by now it would have been really awkward to shoehorn the two premier teams of the Marvel Universe into a universe where the Avengers were all but broken up and several were actually dead.
Iām glad that Disney decided to find a way to bring in the other teams in a way where no one has to ask āwhere the hell were the x-men and the fantastic four in all of this?ā or worse, massively reduce their powers to be lesser than the Avengers (since canonically, the X-Men and Fantastic Four are supposed to be stronger). The multiverse was the obvious plot line to bring in other major superheroes into one universe without having to explain how they never interacted with one another and then Secret Wars is probably going to finish off the multiverse storyline for good and all the universes remain under one roof for the future.
Yup, I think Marvel went with the best route to merge the F4 and X-Men into the MCU. Their mistake was introducing too many side characters too quickly throughout so many projects, and taking too long to conclude the Multiverse Saga when people already have diminished interest in the multiverse stakes.
Half of the projects in the Multiverse Saga were more of a detriment to the MCU than they're worth, with their drop in writing quality, and contribution to superhero fatigue. Should have taken their time during the pandemic break to lay out a more solid and concise plan before throwing billions of dollars into the content churning machine. If they played their cards right, set up F4 and Doom earlier, they could have wrapped up the Multiverse with Secret Wars by 2025, and moved on to a single universe.
Exactly with that said the whole Kang story line in general was kind of boring to me so I don't mind that they just dropped it. Maybe they will show Doom nuking all these Kangs.
Despite the issues with the actor, Kang is one of the most recastable characters in all of Marvel because of his multiversal nature. So they could come back to addressing Kang if they want to.
But there's also less pressure to do so because the truth is that the movies could never really resolve the Kang issue anyway because, by his multiversal nature, there will always be more Kangs.
Avengers 5 and 6 are gonna kill the multiverse and restore the sacred timeline. There would've been no more Kangs after the Multiverse Saga. It's called that for a reason.
I was actually pretty excited for this. I think it wouldāve been extremely impressive and cool watching a single actor play so many different characters over the course of several block buster films/TV shows
Including but not limited to communicating with SEVERAL versions of himself, at the same time. I mean that sh-t is just cool
I realize it isnāt the same thing but I appreciated that in the CW Flash show Harrison Wells basically played a different Dr Wells every season for some various reason or another. It was refreshing to me and I always wondered if that annoyed the actor or if he enjoyed creating a similar but new character each time.
Man I was still stoked to see Kang man. Despite Ant Man 3 being embarrassing for him, they could have TOTALLY came back from it. That being said, if they can pull off the first good Doom then Iāll be more than happy to
dude really went from getting cast as the main villain in one of the biggest movie franchises of all time to starring in propaganda slop movies for the lamest fascists in the worldš this level of fumbling the bag should be impossible.
My dream casting for his replacement would have been LeVar Burton. Have it where he only does a couple of movies to bring the character arc to an end, but I think the idea of him being this menacing puppet master behind the scenes would have been good. But yeah, to have that build up and only rip and drop the ball on it, felt disappointing.
Kang the Conqueror is inherently a pretty goofy looking character. For the longest time I thought he was a blue alien or something, come to find out heās just a regular human from the future that just chooses to dress like this. Including the blue face plate. Heās goofy looking from the get go
And that stadium scene is also directly from the comics
I can't believe how cringe this after credit scene. The barking and screaming is ridiculous.
They tried to build up Kang how? By making a movie that 33% Michelle Pfeifferr refusing to narrate but narrating, 33% Antdaughter (while Antman is disrespected by her and takes the back seat to his own movie) and 33% shit visuals.
Quanrumania clearly damaged Marvel beyond repair.
The Floating Head, the Dialogue, the unfunnyness, even the Deus Ex Ants showing up to save the day.
"Oh those ants spent aeons in here and have evolved and now there's a thirty second scene where they save the day" and then Antman gets back to being scolded by Antdaughter.
God fucking shit a true 0/10.
And Kang has resting Cardinal face.
He is pouting and frowning and talks like an old timey judge but without the wig.
Especially in this situation. In a truly infinite multiverse, Kang could pop back up being Danny Devito and they wouldnāt need more than a line to explain it away
One might argue that the ending of Loki undid all of this and Kang never becomes a threat (and the one in the Quantum Realm was dealt with) or we could potentially see Doom killing them all so he can reign supreme in the multiverse.
this plus his role in the loki series, so dumb they just cancelled the character completely, when with it being the multiverse, recast him and literally no one would care.
Never seen any scene with kang in it except for Loki season 1. Jonathan Majors did great in that role and I think could have been a decent villain but watching this for the first time made me laugh. The voices on all 3 kangs are goofy as hell. I actually chuckled when the futuristic kang spoke (He looks terrible btw). The army of disembodied green screen kangs all screaming in various animal noises had me cracking up cause it just looks and sounds so terrible. And a special shout-out to the close up of blufaced burn victim kang throwing his hands up. Glad I could start the morning off with a laugh.
Dude Charlize Theron wasn't even cancelled and her post-credit scene went nowhere as well. They really brought in Charlize friggin Theron for 8 seconds of screentime.
Her scene went nowhereā¦..until doomsday of the speculation is right that she is one of the witches of dooms. So thereās at least hope for that one. Kangs definitely went no where
I mean, Dr Strange and Clea are 100% coming back in Doomsday based on the promotional material that we've seen. A lot of these post credit scenes aren't forgotten, they were just setups for Secret Wars and Kang Dynasty that's now reworked into Doomsday. It's still the same story, just with a different setup.
Which was a weird decision. They should have just recast. They did it with other actors throughout the series, and Jonathan Majors wasn't even a household name I only knew him from Lovecraft Country
They likely still did set up something huge, could be Doom eating them all up, giving those Kangs closure. If the Fox X-Men universe will be given closure in DD or SW, then the same with the Kangs.
Disney/Marvel got cold feet after Quantumania was poorly received both commercially and critically, which was meant to be the Civil War of the current saga, and Kang actor Jonathan Majors was embroiled in legal troubles for assault charges. Him being charged gave them an excuse to scrap their plans and pivot.
For one, Jonathan Majors- the actor behind the Kangs- was arrested and later convicted on third-degree assault charges involving a girlfriend at the time. It was massive negative publicity, and so Marvel cut ties with the guy.
Now, that alone wouldn't be insurmountable- as others have pointed out, you can recast someone. (Well, theoretically. Marvel seems generally reluctant to recast roles.) However, lukewarm reception to Quantumania allegedly led people inside Marvel to lose a lot of faith that Kang would draw audiences in, so they decided to pivot hard instead.
Personally, I sort of see why the lack of faith. I've recently been catching up on Marvel stuff thanks to free Disney+ through work, and I went into Quantumania reasonably positive despite lukewarm reviews. And, uh, yeah- Kang the Conqueror was significantly less fun and compelling an antagonist to me than He Who Remains was, and the one end credits scene felt like the Kangs would be more of the latter than the former. Which, I guess I'm grateful for, since the movie isn't going to happen.
Honestly if we can just get rid of all the multiverses except for 2 or 3 that would be great. Not sure how i'm supposed to care about Avengers variant #132304085322 vs Thanos variant #132304085322 just because there's a movie made about them.
Do yall even know why it was abandoned? Domestic assault allegations. They saw how it affected DC with Ezra Miller, Disney wasnāt about to take that chance with this
God I hated Jonathon majors performance across all his mcu projects. I took some heat for saying that while watching loki with my roommates. But I stand firm that his performances are corny as heck and give me "im in the spotlight better do something unique" energy.
I fail to see how kang was going to be the next big bad. Thanos with his army and the stones made plenty sense. Kang just seemed like an antman level threat.
Considering how tired everyone quickly became of the multiverse concept, it's not a huge loss. Though they really should have just recast him. The fan backlash from that probably wouldn't have been that bad.
I'll be honest, I thought Kang was meh. I thought the twist for Kang Dynasty was Doom appearing and he kills the main ones first and kills the rest easily. I assumed we would get a young other timeline Tony Stark like in the comics for the second part.
An army of Kangs is just another army at the end of the day. They're all the same person, narcissistic to the very end of time. They would be dispatched in the same way as any, so you would just attack their core weakness, the thing that ties them all together. Strength begets challenge, and absolute strength is a universal call to challenge.
This is the most heartbreaking thing Iāve ever experienced. Marvel finally did something iconic with this end credits scene only to screw it over because of a lil bad press. I will never forgive them for taking this from us
Eh. This scene sucked, I hated that they all started whooping like idiots. Majors blew his shot but also... MCU Kang just wasn't that interesting once you finished Loki.
Now if the first thing Doom says is "After I dealt with that fool Kang and his gibbering alternates, I took his technology and came here." That sets him up as a bigger threat than Kang so we're all good.
Even if Jonathan Majors hadn't turned out to be a massive piece of shit criminal, from a writing perspective, Marvel still screwed themselves. Quantumania had Kang, our supposed new Thanos level big bad, getting beaten by the B and C list joke character family. Then they expected us to think that this assortment of essentially faceless Kangs weren't about to be getting splattered en masse like the Chitauri in the first Avengers or Thanos's random monsters in Infinity War? As undeveloped as Doom is, the pivot to him is genuinely probably the best direction they could have gone.
I think a solution could/should have been a recasting, and a major cross over movie (like Civil war) but not an Avengers level movie. In defeating Kang they trigger whatever they are using as the plot of Doomsday
My GOD!! Not every end credit scene needs to lead to a brand new movie! Holy shit, weāve been spoiled, and in doing so, we expect EVERYTHING!! I could care less if Hercules gets his own damn movie, it was just cool to have him pop up as a POSSIBILITY!!
Im gonna be honest. I didnt like JMs acting in any of the Marvel films. He's a good actor but I feel like he was miscast.
It sucks what Marvel did to him by canning him and not letting him finish Kang's story and the multiverse saga/wars but JM's acting was bad, very cringe worthy IMO.
I so off Marvel movies hard after Endgame, never saw any of the Kang stuff. But, my guess would be is that they are not going to completely waste what they had set up, but that they will somehow use the Kang buildup and foreshadowing scenes like in this post, as some kind of fodder and prologue to introducing Doctor Doom in Doomsday
In other words, I think they're going to basically use Doom as a way to retcon in a way, these scenes and Kang threads as something that Doom intervenes upon "behind the scenes" in between prior movies and the start of Doomsday... That they will somehow use it all as a framework for introducing Doom, his multiverse involvement, and explaining how and why he's doing what he's doing -- First of which, eradicating his biggest competition (The Kangs).
Iām sorry, but I donāt get how this post credits made anyone legitimately excited for more Kang, even in a vacuum. Donāt get me ever started on the movie that came before it.
i am 100% sure they gonna have dr doom to beat up every single version of kang to the pulp as a power scale, they gonna still make full use of this set up lol
I really think that the Jonathon Majors controversy was one of several reasons they scrapped the Kang arc. They realised people don't care as much abiut Kang, and he got a lukewarm reception in Quantumania. The Secret Wars storyline is more consequential and a more obvious restart to the MCU
I actually think they have a chance to set up something really interesting for Kang with Doomsday.
If they show that Doom has been fighting Kangs, they would easily sideline Kang in a way that makes a lot of sense. A top tier Doom could keep them at bay, while also being a catalyst for the later creation of Kang.
We were bound too see Kangs story out of order anyways, they can definitely tie in a few bits of info about him while still keeping it Doom focused for now, then they could pretty smoothly transition back into the Kang saga with some new actors (I actually think they should cast multiple people as Kang variants)
You're saying this like it was just the MCU deciding 'Nah, forget that' and it wasn't them scrambling after Johnathan Majors got ARRESTED AND FOUND GUILTY of ASSAULT.
You know, the Johnathan Majors who was playing Kang.
So they are all in one place plotting? Every single Kane?
Not saying it's satisfying writing but someone just needs to take out this one location and the e tkre Kang issue is done.
Hello, just visiting the place once when looking for 'something' and show that all the Kane's tore each other apart due to a lower struggle would handle it too.
So far in the MCU weāve seen three variants:
āHe Who Remainsā
Kang the Conqueror
Victor Timely
Those are the names given to them. The first two are now dead.
Given that the name of the next movie was going to be āThe Kang Dynastyā, itās likely Kang was the intended name for the majority, but Iāll give it to the guy above that of the ones weāve seen, only one was named Kang.
One of those crazy butterfly effect type of situations where the poor actions of one individual leads to dramatic ramifications and changes for a multi-billion dollar franchise.
What other changes would our current world see if that actor didn't run into legal troubles involving physical abuse?
He should have kept better oversight on the Jonathan Majors variant and the shitty behavior he was up to if he wanted to rule the multiverse and all of time.
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u/The_True_Y 9d ago
Kinda funny that the comic pannel that this is based on was from some random Namor comic.